Modeling and experimental validation of Mullins stress-softening in male and female mice skins

Abstract

A Mullins effect is a commonly observed phenomenon describing how biological tissues lose their elastic modulus encountering a certain level of deformation. Many biological tissues, including heart, skin, and blood vessels, exhibit this stress-softening phenomenon. The current study models and simulates such an effect using skin samples from male and female mice tested under higher cyclic loading conditions. The study employs a newly proposed energy density function and compares its performance against existing energy functions that fail to accurately predict the Mullins effect at higher loading cycles. The findings, supported by experimental data, demonstrate that the proposed energy function qualitatively captures the effect in the tested skin samples.